findingblanks wrote: ↑Sun Nov 14, 2021 11:16 pm
“Just to clarify, if it is not already clear - I am saying this observation of present thinking cannot be done in principle.”
Yes, when we define things in this manner, I fully agree that the prior activity can never - even in principle - be the object of observation or thought form.
And I finally have my Khulewind back so I’ll share his comments on this topic. I share them not to set up an either/or approach to the question, but just to show that there are other ways of carving into the issue, each highlighting slightly different aspects. If somebody prefers one modality of expression this need not mean they are simply disagreeing or claiming the other is completely wrong or misunderstanding the other.
To be clear, I personally prefer the way Khulewind reads the distinctions in this case. It captures more of my experience and it captures more of the connections I see in the text (PoF) itself. However, I also don’t fully agree with everything he says. I quote him (and Steiner) here because, well, you asked and now I have the digital copy in hand. Also, I think he states this clearly and deserves credit because he certainly wrote this before I had heard of Steiner.
FB, thank you for all of these quotes. They will definitely provide a lot of fruitful territory to explore.
The first quotation begins with Steiner:
“The difficulty of grasping the essential nature of thinking by observation lies in this, that it has all too easily eluded the introspecting soul by the time the soul tries to bring it into the focus of attention. Nothing then remains to be inspected but the lifeless abstraction, the corpse of living thinking.”
Khulewind points out that here, at this point in the later chapters, Steiner uses the word ‘difficulty,’ rather than impossibility.
“Note that mention is again made of the difficulties in experiencing thinking in the present, but it is not set aside as impossible, as in the quotation from the third chapter.”
Steiner clearly recognized that thinking is what makes possible the observation of the thought-corpse or lifeless abstraction.
In your examples and comments to me you also are very clear about the observation we can make being that of the finished abstraction.
Here, there are two options - 1) By "difficulty", Steiner is once again saying it is impossible with mere intellect, but for whatever reason used "difficulty"; 2) By "grasping", Steiner means a dim understanding of the fact that Thinking lays behind all our spiritual activity. I prefer #2 because we can easily confirm this truth - before reading PoF up to these parts, most people would be completely unaware that this role of Thinking is even a possibility. Now, after reading them, we are aware that it is a possibility, but most likely we have not directly experienced the living Thinking yet. The key thing to remember with all of these interpretations is this underlying point which holds true no matter which interpretation we choose - at present, we are
incomplete beings who have
not developed living Thinking yet. It is also what Heidegger says in the 1950s (since he was brought up on the other thread) - "
we are still not yet Thinking".
Steiner says:
“If we only look at this abstraction, we may easily find ourselves compelled to enter into the mysticism of feeling or perhaps metaphysics of will, which, by contrast, appear so ‘full of life.’ We should then find it strange that anyone should expect to grasp the essence of reality in
mere thoughts.’”
Steiner is aware that strong feelings and strong impulses of will will capture our priorities if we only have lifeless abstractions to compare them to. And Steiner even can sympathize with the person who is making such a comparison and the way they would call it ‘mere thoughts’. But he goes on:
“But if we once succeed in finding life in thinking, we shall know that swimming in mere feelings, or being intuitively aware of the will element, cannot even be compared with the inner wealth and self-contained yet ever active experience of this life of thinking, let alone ranked above it. . .”
The ‘experience’ Steiner mentions here is a present experience of nothing other than thinking as the self-sustaining activity that it (and only it) is. I know some Anthroposophists that take Steiner's use of 'finding' to indicate an abstract intellectual process of inference, but to me it is very clear that this 'finding' is a direct grasping and cognizing rather than an intellectual inference or speculation.
Yes, we can be presently aware (with intellect) that our feelings and impulses are only dimly sensed once we understand the role of Thinking in our experience, i.e. that our feelings and impulses will be liberated through it. But, they have
not yet been liberated. We are still holding that possibility as an
abstract concept. If we confuse that abstract concept for the actual liberating activity, we have fallen into what spiritual tradition calls "idolatry". Idolatry is so cautioned against because it stops us in our tracks - if we assume that we have already been spiritually liberated, then we have no motivation to pursue our spiritual activity even deeper into the depths of our Being.
And then Steiner presents us with this notion of how we can ‘turn’ towards and away from this living present thinking. Obviously ‘turn’ is a metaphor but I am very glad he uses it. Khulewind’s comments are in the brackets.
“If we turn towards thinking in its essence [i.e., the living, not the past thinking], we find in it both feeling and will, and these in the depths of their reality [feeling that perceives, will that perceives]; if we turn away from thinking towards “mere” feeling and will, we lose from these their true reality. If we are ready to experience thinking intuitively, we can also do justice to the experience of feeling and will. . .”
Okay and then Khulewind goes on to say:
“The attentive reader will realize that these sentences do not deal with the observation of past thinking (thoughts), but rather speak of the experience of present, living thinking.”
Steiner goes on:
“A proper understanding of this observation leads to the insight that thinking can be directly discerned as a self-contained entity.”
And I assume you and I both agree that when Steiner says ‘thinking can be directly discerned’ he is not saying that we can make a good inference about thinking or grasp an intellectual concept about it, but, rather, he is pointing to a present cognitive activity. The ‘insight’ is not the same kind of ‘insight’ people refer to when they have a web of finished concepts about some event or phenomena. The ‘insight’ is the very present activity that Steiner is distinguishing from observing abstract thoughts.
We do not agree here. Steiner is speaking of living thinking, agreed, but it is
not "present activity" (by this I am assuming you always mean normal intellectual reasoning cognition). As long as we refrain from assuming we are complete beings presently, and that cognition has basically stopped evolving (or will not evolve for a long, long time, which is practically the same), then it is easy to see how Steiner is pointing to higher cognition of
fully conscious imagination, inspiration, and intuition. To highlight the difference,
according to Steiner (and I am sure you are already aware of this), imagination makes our dreaming state fully conscious, inspiration-intuition our deep dreamless sleep. So here we are talking about major qualitative leaps in cognition which allow for "direct discernment".
Again Steiner:
“When we observe our thinking, we live during this observation directly within a self-supporting, spiritual web of being. Indeed, we can even say that if we would grasp the essential nature of spirit in the form in which it presents itself most immediately to man, we need only look at the self-sustaining activity of thinking. . .”
And Khulewind and I are inclined to point to ‘during this observation’ as the key distinction Steiner is making between all other observations and when we grasp thinking itself in the present.
And then I’ll finish Khulewind’s comments when he explains why Steiner’s earlier comments about the impossibility of objectively contemplating our active thinking do not contradict Steiner claim that we must directly grasp thinking in the present rather than its thought product:
“The contrast with the assertion that ‘active production and its objective contemplation’ are mutually exclusive could not be more decisive. In reality there is no contradiction here at all, since intuitive experience is neither objective contemplation (“standing over against”) nor “observation” in the usual sense, but rather is presence, presentness in the activity, the unmediated experience from within...”
I can’t stress enough that the importance for me of contrasting these two diverse claims
I am saying this observation of present thinking cannot be done in principle.”
Thinking can observed directly
isn’t to prove one is right and the other is wrong. I simply would want each side to see how the other could have reached their conclusions. That I believe Steiner was indeed saying that thinking can be directly observed as the essential self-sustaining activity of cognition doesn’t mean that I can’t understand why somebody might say that it is impossible to observe present thinking.
Even from my viewpoint it is impossible to observe present thinking if we attempt to do so from within the habitual notion and activity of what it means to objectively observe or contemplate a phenomena.
I can see how you would reach some of these conclusions simply from reading PoF and also a respected scholar's interpretation of it. Fair enough. But once we broaden out to consider
any of his other writings related to spiritual science, all of those interpretations fall apart. Then it becomes clear that PoF is only the most basic of basic starting points. This starting point is critical, because, as alluded before, once the higher light of the Spirit dawns on our thinking, then the rest of spiritual scientific approach naturally unfolds from there. It still requires a lot of thoughtful effort, but the PoF framework truly makes all of the Triune dynamics of body-soul-spirit and willing-feeling-thinking easier to approach.
I am really not trying to make this into a hostile claim or anything - it is just a plain fact. That is what confuses me the most about these interpretations you propose. The only way I can see to reconcile those things is to say Steiner first started out with little knowledge or acceptance of higher cognition and therefore assumed intellectual observing of one's own thinking was fully living and direct experience of thinking. Only later, he became deluded into thinking there are even higher modes of cognition which are more alive and direct. Is that your position? I doubt it. And, I could be wrong, but I think Steiner alludes to higher cognition in his writings even
prior to PoF 1895 edition.
